Traditional Indigenous foodways and retail subsidies: Evidence from the Northwest Territories Community Survey and Nutrition North Canada

Traditional foods (often referred to as “country foods†) play a critical role in Indigenous culture, nutrition, food sovereignty and food security. Policies that prioritize store-bought food are often viewed as undermining these foods. We provide evidence that two recent policy reforms that subsidize store-bought food in the Northwest Territories do not appear to negatively impact traditional foods. Our analysis uses community surveys conducted in the Northwest Territories that measure the importance of consumption and production of traditional country food along several margins. Using a difference-in-difference methodology, we show that two transitions associated with the Nutrition North Canada subsidy program – the transition from Food Mail to Nutrition North in 2011- 2012 and the expansion of subsidy eligibility to new communities in 2016 – had a zero or positive impact on these outcomes. We use price and quantity data from multiple sources to provide evidence on mechanisms and find support for an interpretation based on country foods having a high income elasticity and low substitutability with store-bought meat and other foods.